What can I say about On The Outside? If you don’t know this song, go and listen to it. Tony Sly’s vocals and especially the duet parts give me goosebumps everytime: „Whatever we go through, my heart is stuck with you“.

I also really like how the song instantly kicks in after the spoken intro. No wonder, On The Outside is the only song on the tribute album to Tony Sly* (he died in 2012), that is covered by two different bands.

Tony Sly also did an acoustic version of On The Outside. Here’s a live video of him performing it together with Joey Cape. Tony himself mentions, that it probably is his best song.

Making Friends* also contains number 2 on the list of my favourite songs by No Use For A Name, that almost made this list: The Answer Is Still No*. And like almost all of the albums on this list before, it’s completely FREE on Amazon Prime*!

If you like the band and want to support Tony Sly’s family after his early death, go buy The Songs Of Tony Sly: A Tribute*. The revenues go into a fund for his daughters.

What’s your favourite song by No Use For A Name? Did I pick the right one for my list?

Perhaps you already guessed this one, because I gave a hint in the article for position 9 (Always by Good Riddance). I’m sure many of you will disagree with me for choosing Alison’s Disease as my favourite song by Lagwagon. However, I couldn’t think of any other Lagwagon song that instantly grabs me like this one. Well, perhaps Dis’chords* would make the list.

I really like Alison’s Disease because it starts strong and gets even better later on. The diversified guitar play adds perfectly to the vocals and the guitar solo right after the first chorus really rocks. I also like the slower part in the second half and the ending of the song.

Joey Cape also did an acoustic version of the song for his second album together with Tony Sly (who also made it to this list, in fact, my favourite song by No Use For A Name gets revealed next week):

As I’ve mentioned before, Live Fat, Die Young* contains even more great songs. So go and listen to it! 🙂

I use Foxit Reader as my default PDF viewer for quite some time now. The only thing that bugged me, however, was its exclusive access to the opened PDF files. When working with LaTeX and using Foxit Reader for displaying the compiled PDF files, I had to close the PDF file manually everytime I wanted to recompile the document (which can be quite often).

Today, I found the solution to this problem: Foxit Reader is able to open PDF files without blocking them. With a simple command line argument you can enable this non-blocking mode:

/A nolock=1

For example, if you wanted to open D:\mydocument.pdf, you would call Foxit Reader like this:

However, calling Foxit Reader manually like this can be pretty cumbersome. So I decided to make the non-blocking opening the system default. This turns out to be pretty easy. Just fire up regedit.exe and add the above command line argument to the key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FoxitReader.Document\shell\open\command. Here’s a complete REG file for this (you may need to change the path to Foxit Reader):

Number 7 on my list of the Top 13 Punk Rock songs is Divorce by Craig’s Brother. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, there are unresolved issues with GEMA and YouTube. So here’s a live version of the band performing the song instead of the album version.

Although quite unknown, Craig’s Brother wrote a lot of really great punk rock songs, in my opinion. Divorce was the first one I listened to and I was instantly hooked. The melodic vocals and their diversified instrument parts add up to some really catchy songs.

I really like the 2001 version better than the „original“ one from Keepin‘ It Real. I think the newer version sounds more mature. But decide for yourself.

Lost At Sea* contains quite some more really good songs. In fact, it was hard for me to decide which song to choose for this list. Glory* ranked high on my list, too.

It was really hard to decide which Rise Against song is my favourite, but I’ve finally ended up with Torches. Its mix of fast Punk Rock riffs, catchy vocals and just the right amount of screaming really makes it stand out. It’s again the intro riff that instantly grabs my attention whenever I hear it. It makes me want to grab my guitar and play along! 🙂

According to Wikipedia (see Rise Against – Wikipedia), Rise Against already had two albums on position 1 in the German album charts. And Satellite* even gets played on major radio stations in Germany. But unlike other bands that give in to mainstream sound, Rise Against continue to provide solid Punk Rocks songs and don’t shy away from fast riffs and screaming.

Good Riddance are known for their intense but short songs. Their newest album Peace In Our Time* from 2015 is only 27 minutes long (and it contains some really good songs, by the way!).

Always is my favourite song, because it is short, to the point, and really catchy. It starts with a powerful guitar riff and rocks all the way through to the end. The octaves in the chorus complete the band’s well known sound.

The song was first released on the Fat Wreck Chords sampler Live Fat, Die Young, that also contains song number 6 on my list. Perhaps you are able to guess which one it is!? 🙂

Good Riddance later re-released the song in 2010 on their compilation Capricorn One, to which you can listen for free, if you are on Amazon Prime:

When I think of Bad Religion, I immediately think of Cease. I scrolled through their hundreds (!) of songs from the last 30 years, but I couldn’t find a song that better captures the band’s style and what I like most about their music: meaningful lyrics and a straight Punk Rock sound.

The song starts with the catchy guitar riff and kicks off with a melodic guitar solo. The first few bars of the verse are a bit slower and give room for the main vocals. But the rest of the verse is classic Bad Religion again: power chords in Punk Rock rhythm. Melodic background vocals support Greg Graffin on the way to the chorus. And the cycle repeats.

The song is very melodic and catchy. I recommend you also listen to its acoustic version. Great songs simply sound good regardless of which muscial style they are played in:

Bad Religion don’t stop the rocking even after over 30 years in the business and I like their newer material as well as the classic albums. They even seem to increase the speed with every new album. Listen to their newest album True North* to get an impression.

The Gray Race contains quite a few more classic Bad Religion songs like Punk Rock Song and A Walk (which I both played with my band when I was younger 😉 ). If you haven’t checked out the album yet, I would definitely recommend to do so!

What’s your favourite Bad Religion song? Did I pick the right one for my list?

The intro riff instantly grabs my attention. It’s so fast and powerful and builds up over time. When the drums kick in and the vocals start, I can’t help but think of how it would feel to play this song on stage. No wonder I had to learn how to play the riff myself. 😉

But back to Crush: The fast verse leads up to the slower chorus. The melody of the vocals is really catchy and the chorus ends with a fast bridge and my favourite part – „and take up our arms like sitcom soldiers“ – and leads back to the intro riff again. Just to prepare for the melodic guitar solo.

Although I don’t like the band’s newer material (more Rock, less Punk) as much, the 2002 album Timing is Everything* contains some more really good punk rock songs like Limiter* or Cross-Tolerance*. I would definitely recommend to check out the whole album.